@Vkimo somebody has to stick up for monsters. I mean you throw one little girl in a lake and it turns out she can't swim and all the sudden everybody is like pitchforks and torches, and now being compared to football jocks.

At my house there are usually a few trick-or-treaters that show up before we go out ourselves. We put up a graveyard in the front yard with a color wheel light bathing the house in yellow, green, blue,and red in a slow sequence. Unless someone stays at the house to pass out candy like a grandparent, we usually turn out all the lights because we are out trick-or-treating ourselves.

I live in a house but it is so out of the way that few people would enjoy much of anything I did to it for Halloween. With Christmas, lights can always get a person's attention. But Halloween is typically all about darkness, so it's hard to get attention from way off for it.

Yeah if one has not experienced the explosion of fall colors in the forests or mountains it is definitely worth a trip. I used to go on little trips to see the leaves up the canyons all the time as a kid.
Those Halloween weapons are straight up dangerous! My little brother was running with a scythe in his hand one year and tripped on it breaking it with the jagged edge of the staff end going right into his mouth and impaling the roof of his mouth. Stitches were required at the E.R. thankfully it was not on Halloween itself.
I wish I could be the guy that decorates all out every year. Right now my kids are still trick-or-treat age but in a few years maybe. I have done haunted walkway themes in the past, I am sure there are more in my future.
I also donned the dented helmet of a certain merciless bounty hunter one year, no one laughed when I won the limbo contest with my rubber boots, helmet and a blaster earning a 5 lb pail of bubble gum!

As for poor Steve, I can relate. I recall that, one year, I (by myself) decorated the pathway from our driveway to our door and prepared to scare trick-or-treaters (as opposed to actually trick-or-treating myself), only to find that barely anyone wanted to make the long walk up our driveway to our house. I feel Steve's pain.

Living here in Rutland, we are WELL aware of when trick-or-treating starts and stops, because the fire department's siren sounds to begin and end the event. There is no mistaking when you're DONE, and the residents get to chow down on their own remaining sweets.

I have to say, I love the layout of this piece. Just love it. It sucks that search engines won't find it because it's an image (well, unless they're LOOKING for an image of course) but it's like finding treasure... those who do find it will be very happy they did.

You are as always the king of mood setting layouts, the 8 bit monsters in the borders were great. Poor Steve, it was always special to me when the adults handing out candy were dressed up, it really amplified the spirit of the night. The soda displays were always epic, especially when Elvira and the Universal Monsters were involved thanks to Pepsi and Doritos. Good stuff!